journey of life

…in the sun. I’ve created a gallery showing the dogs in their favorite sunny napping spots. Our oldest dog loves to hang out by the back door to keep an eye on the squirrels that love to terrorize her. When she tires of watching the squirrels, she snoozes in the sunlight. Our youngest, a couch potato, moves the pillows as she follows the sunlight coming in from our side window. Smart girls.

And, apparently, our oldest dog isn’t as deaf as she may appear. The click of a camera shutter startles her awake.

October 31, 2007, 4:00 pm
38 - pre-made treat bags filled with candy, and stickers. And lots of extra candy, just in case.

October 31, 2007, 9:00 pm
17 - number of trick-or-treaters that came to our door

November 1, 2007, 9:00 am
40 - Kit Kat bars leftover
24 - Snickers bars leftover
20 - Reece’s cups leftover
21 - empty treat bags leftover

Because we move so often, predicting the number of trick-or-treaters is a crap shoot. However, I always buy too much candy. This year I had convinced myself we would get hoards of kids. After all, we live in a neighborhood ripe for ghosts and goblins to appear on Halloween night. Maybe the goblins need a couple more years to fully mature? Anyway, the result is a ton of candy to put in the freezer for later use.

Do the chickens have large talons? Yes, here’s Matt, decked out as Napoleon Dynamite for Halloween.

And I was Deb, Napoleon’s friend. For the past few weeks we have been quoting lines from the movies (to get in character, of course), cracking ourselves up in the process. The costumes were pretty easy to put together. Matt already had a “Vote for Pedro” t-shirt, jeans and boots and we bought the wig and glasses to complete Napoleon’s look. Deb’s outfit was thrown together from items out of my closet. Thing is, I had clothes that looked just like what Deb wears at one point in my life. We had a lot of fun pulling it all together. So, for all those loyal Take A Guess readers, the correct answer was A!

Below are some wanted requests I’ve seen come through on my local freecycle:

- good reading books (this gal actually admits to the group that she is unwilling to go to the library, she wants new stuff and she wants to read at her own pace).
- Hercules hooks (as seen on T.V.)
- treadmill
- two highchairs, a crib mattress, a sofa (bed), a desk, an office chair, a microwave oven, and a single stroller…all in a single request.

Then, there are people asking for tables, valances, sofas, with stipulations, like, please take a picture and needs to be (fill in the blank: size, color, age) and somebody wanting a cell phone of a certain carrier. But the kicker for me is the woman who has posted over fifty requests in two months who has asked for *everything* I have offered.  In my mind, this is excessive and definitely not the intention of freecycle.

I have offered to assist in moderating this forum (because I don’t see anybody doing it), but have yet to receive a response from the gods that be.  So, as a result, I have set up a filter to automatically send any email with a “wanted” in the subject line to the trash.  There.  Problem solved.  It’s like automatically having credit card offers immediately shredded for you so you can open the real mail and packages!

Our youngest dog has had a puking problem. It started several months ago, and recently has gotten more frequent. She only vomits when she is “over-hungry”, right before she eats, and the vomit is foamy, watery and yellow (sometimes clear) in tint. Too much information? Sorry.  But, if you have/had a dog who does/did this and have some suggestions, I’m all ears.

Our vet is not concerned about this at all. Apparently, it’s fairly common, and what little research I did supports her belief.  But, she did suggest giving our dog treats before bed and in the morning before she started moving around. Then, in the morning, as soon as she gets up, we shuttle her outside to do her business and feed her as quickly as possible. This really wasn’t working well, so we have a different plan of attack now. We are feeding her a total of a cup of food a day. A half a cup in the morning, a quarter of a cup at 5:00 pm (or thereabouts) and the remaining quarter of a cup close to bedtime (10:00 pm or so). Will it work? We will just have to wait and see, but it has seemed to work these past few days. The competitive eater she is (seriously, she could kick ass Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest) actually left her breakfast to come see me this morning. Usually she doesn’t leave her post until it’s all gone. Anyway, if our new method doesn’t work our vet suggested 5 mg of Pepcid AC at bedtime might help, which will be our next step. And, lastly, it could be the food, doubtful but plausible, something else we can alter.

If nothing else, play the video while you read the remainder of post.

Of course, the key to a beautiful bed is decorative pillows, and lots of them. Magazines discuss properly layering the pillows for a desired effect. Well, that’s all fine and dandy, but for those of us who are practical and don’t/can’t sleep with all those dang pillows, it creates a pillow problem. What do people do with all these pillows when they are sleeping. I refuse to place them on the floor, so they usually sit on my bedside table. And, sometimes, they sit there several days at a time. So, let’s talk pillows. Decorative bed pillows, that is. What are you supposed to do with them at night?

I was on a mission. I was determined to replicate what I had seen a girl do to her T-shirt. From the looks of things, it was as if she had cut straight down the sides of the t-shirt (from the armpit down to the bottom of the shirt), then, cut slits up the shirt, about an inch apart (in a ladder-like fashion) and tied the slits together. I had hoped to find better directions on the internet, but instead I found a brief summary and reference to a book entitled, “99 Ways to Cut, Sew, Trim, and Tie Your T-Shirt into Something Special“.

So, I took an old T-shirt, laid it down flat and cut up the sides of the shirt. Then I cut slits approximately 1/2″ apart from each other, each slit was about 1 1/4 ” long. Essentially, I had 1/2″ tabs all the way up the shirt.

Next, I lined up the shirt up and tied square knots all the way down, making sure I didn’t skip a tab.

The results were very close to what I saw this weekend and I can honestly say my prototype turned out rather well.

Some things to keep in mind.
- This would be a great project for teenagers. I think younger children might find it a bit tedious.
- Make sure to use a shirt that’s a little too big. When you cut and tie the sides you are making the shirt smaller. Of course the longer you make the tabs, the smaller the shirt will be. I imagine you could even vary the lengths of the tabs so it is fitted to your shape (ie. girls, you can make the T-shirt a little more fitted).
- I made my tabs 1/2″ wide. If they were any wider, I think there would be too much skin showing. If they were less wide, I think you risk tearing the tabs.
- The possibilities are endless. I think I might continue straight up the sleeves as well to see what it looks like. The sleeves would be a little capped then, I would think. Also, I think layer tshirts of different colors could be really cool, and would probably have less holes on the sides.

Over the past few months, Matt has seriously considered selling the racecar. With spare time so precious these days, making it to a race weekend, not to mention maintaining the car himself, is almost impossible. We also have no garage and no real off street parking or driveway to speak of. This weekend we had every intention of bringing back the car (currently being stored on my family’s farm) and putting it up for sale. We knew that there was some question as to whether or not the trailer would actually fit through the gate into our backyard, but we figured we could park the trailer on the street and store the car in the backyard while we put everything up for sale. After measuring the trailer’s width (it IS too wide to fit through the gate) and reading up on ordinances (it is illegal to store the trailer on the street), we aborted on the mission.

Once we got back home we started problem solving and the wheels in our brains (which work very differently and can be a very good thing) started whirring. What could we do to make it possible to store the car in the yard while we are trying to get it sold? Well, of course the gate would need to be wider somehow, which would basically mean replacing the fence. But the fence is in poor shape anyhow, it honestly wouldn’t hurt to replace the gate along the side and behind the house, right? But, how much would THAT cost. [Looked online for pricing information.] Oh, not that much. Much cheaper than we originally thought. What about a permit? [Looked online for permit required.] We wouldn’t need a permit as long as we stuck with wood fencing. We can do that ourselves. If we replace the fence and the gate, we’ve solved the problem. We can store the racecar after all in the backyard…but it will kill the grass when parked near the fence. But, the grass there isn’t growing that well anyway. Should we make a permanent parking spot there? Should we put gravel down? Oh, what about those extra bricks by the shed left by the previous owners? We could use those to extend the patio out a bit, place a walkway to the parking spot, put bricks down for a parking spot and also make a walkway from the parking spot to the shed. Yes! That would look really nice. We should really look into this some more this week.

So, if we can store the racecar in the backyard, is it worth keeping?

Oh, what a beautiful day!  The front that moved through last night pushed out the heat and brought us cooler temperatures, bright, blue skies and a nice breeze.  This morning we made some coffee and tea, walked to the Farmer’s Market, popped into a specialty cheese store (they have Raclette, but it’s $12.50/lb.!) opened up the house and turned on ESPN College Gameday.  are gearing up to watch some college football, maybe do some grilling for dinner?  There is hope that sticky summer weather is coming to an end and bright, crisp fall mornings are on their way!

This year’s Clambake was easy-breezy. We were ahead of schedule the entire day, the only snafu the day of the bake was an emergency run for forks, so all in all, it was a huge success. If you missed it, here’s pictures and some brief highlights.

• Gorgeous, glistening Greg is a god when it comes to chopping wood. Just ask “the men” who admired him “theatre in the round” style.
• What the fork? We don’t have any forks? Emergency run to get more.
• Next year Laura earns her ten-year pin. Erin earns her twenty-year pin. They both would like recognition, please.
• Erin is the cleanest Apprentice Fire Master. Ever.
• Wooden tables and benches eventually rot and need to be replaced.
• Seasoned firewood is a must for next year. Unless the transition to propane is a reality. Cliff, be prepared.
• More family bonding activities for next year: horseshoes, volleyball and lawn darts are on the list. FYI : Everyone will be a winner.